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Model comes on wood base with solid brass pedestals

(image of model not yet available)
 

Both ships of the Scharnhorst Class were laid down at two different shipyards in Germany on February 14, 1934. KMS Gneisenau was commissioned first on May 21st, 1938 and KMS Scharnhorst was commissioned January 7th, 1939. They were poor sea boats, and had to be rebuilt with new "Atlantic bows" almost immediately.

In June 1940 both battleships participated in "Operation Juno" and helped sink the Royal Navy aircraft carrier Glorious and two destroyers, but Scharnhorst was torpedoed by the destroyer HMS Acasta and withdrew to Trondheim for emergency repairs, and then Kiel.

Gneisenau was also torpedoed - on the way home by SS Clyde - and went to Trondheim in Norway for emergency repairs before returning to Kiel for refit in July 1940. In April 1941 she was torpedoed again and then bombed at Brest, which necessitated repairs until January 1942. The next month - during "Operation Cerberus" - she hit a mine and returned to Kiel for more repairs, but was bombed in the dock by the RAF resulting in her forecastle being burnt out. A major reconstruction was planned but never completed and she was decommissioned July 1942, and scuttled as a block ship at Gotenhafen in March 1945.

Scharnhorst's career was even shorter, being damaged by two mines during "Operation Cerberus" in February 1942 - which required return to Kiel for repairs.

On the following operation "Ostfront"  in the North Atlantic during late December 1943, she was sunk off the North Cape by gunfire and torpedo hits from a Royal Navy task force. Only 36 men from her crew of 1,968 survived.